1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, an image processing system, a method for controlling the image processing system, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Content management systems using an internet technique have been widely used. A user accesses a server from a client computer via the Internet, and further accesses a web page provided by the server to operate a target content on the web page.
Particularly, in recent years, a form has become popular in which a server performs specific processing on data of the content. Such a form is referred to as a “software as a service (SaaS)”, or “cloud computing”. The server included in such a form provides the service for performing the specific processing on the content.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-287919 discusses a method in which a printer prints the content managed by a content management system. Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-287919 discusses a method in which, when content data is transferred from the server to the printer, the server performs encryption processing on the content data using a public key.
Furthermore, when the printer receives the encrypted content data from the server, the printer decrypts the received content data using a secret key of the printer and then prints the target content. Even if the content data is illegally acquired from a communication pass by this method, since the data is encrypted, information thereof can be prevented from leakage.
Moreover, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2008-533593 discusses a control method for controlling the data in a multi tenant manner, particularly, a method for defining an area for publicizing the data. A data management form of the cloud computing can be performed by a multi tenant management as discussed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2008-533593, and thus an unspecified number of users shares and uses a memory resource. More specifically, a memory of the cloud computing stores the data of an unspecified number of users.
The conventional technique may have an issue in which encryption processing cannot be performed according to a user's purpose for using the data. For example, when the server, as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-287919, performs a specific processing on the data, if encryption processing has been performed on the data with a printer key, the server cannot perform the specific processing on the data.
However, as described above, considering possibility of data leakage, it is safer to perform the encryption processing on the data with the printer key. That is because, even if the third party illegally acquires the data, since the encryption processing has been performed on the data with the public key of the printer, as long as the secret key of the printer is not specified, decryption cannot be easily performed. As described above, the user has a desire for using the services provided by the server by using the form represented by the cloud computing and also for safely managing the data.
As another example, according to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2008-533593, since an unspecified number of users uses the same memory resource, it is highly possible for the data to be illegally acquired by the third party. On the other hand, it can be said that the data managed by such a server is placed in an environment in which a large number of users can easily share the data, and also a system in which nature of the cloud computing can be fully utilized.
As described above, the user has desires for sharing the data by using the server that manages the data in a multi tenant manner and also for safely managing the data.